Sickness
by pinkeop
Summary: It wasn't like Mrs. Lovett to leave things unattended.


**title** Sickness

**author** pinkeop

**summary** It wasn't like Mrs. Lovett to leave things unattended.

**authors note** This is going to be a more... dark one-shot. I got the idea while watching Degrassi and watching Spinner deal with his testicular cancer. I thought, ok, I wrote two sweet fics, time to prove that I can be dark and depressing.

This is rated T because... just because it's a serious subject. That, and the same symptoms- though much less severe -had happened to my best friend a few weeks ago ( he's ok now ). Enjoy ( as much as you can... ) and don't forget to read and review and leave your prompts in a review.

p.s; I don't know what's wrong with Mrs. Lovett, but just imagine something horrible.

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**Sickness**

The laundry had been set down when the room started to spin. The flour had been spilled when her hands started to shiver and shake. The contents off the counter had fallen to the cold wooden floor when she tried to keep her balance, as if she had been drinking. Then, the laundry had been strewn over the floor when she grabbed at the table and clutched the laundry basket instead and stumbled as it tipped over with the bulk of her weight pushing on the edge.

A sharp pain errupted in her side and Mrs. Lovett's throat felt slick with saliva, her mouth filling. She barely made it to the sink when her earlier biscuits and gravy- of which she had only picked at -came back up, a speck of half digested biscuit dribbling onto her dress.

She had caught a slight fever a few days before, but it had dimmed and if she took small breaks inbetween her bustling, she didn't find any need to rest. She'd been going full tilt, of course, as always. Her sleep was fitful and she often awoke in a messy sweat soaking through her sleep gown. Today had been the worst, perhaps. Her stomach had been restless and her fever had returned. The shop had been closed earlier, but the barber upstairs had been having a good day, and the meat needed to be cut and the pockets picked and the pies baked and the laundry washed. It was a few hours after night fall now. And nothing had been attended to.

"God," Mrs. Lovett moaned as she leaned over the sink, gasping as her messy curls stuck to her cheek, sweat beading over her forehead. One hand clutched her side where her corset gave no leavage to the pain that felt like one of Mr. Todd's razors wedging itself right into her side.

Her arms felt weak and she sank onto the floor. She began clawing at the laces that held her dress in place. But her hands shook, her mucles hurting from being so tense. She leaned her head back against the cabnet below the sink and whimpered. It was worse than so long ago when her and her dear Albert's first attempt at a child had been miscarried due to a particularly nasty fall the baker had taken on her way up from the bakehouse.

Panting, the woman slumped over onto the floor, laying her forehead, spiking with fever, on the cold wood. She raised a hand to her mouth as she coughed deep heavy cough. When her hand pulled away, it was speckled with blood and the fear gripped the baker. She was thrown into a temporary panic as she forced herself to her feet by clawing her way up the counter, her nails bloodied and broken by the time she made it, her breathing falling into hyperventalation, tears pricking at her eyes.

"Mr. Todd needs me here," she tried to reason with herself. "Can't go on layin the floor." She swallowed another rise of bile, but it came out and landed on the floor. She doubled over and clutched her stomach as her stomachs contents splattered out, a string of blood following. The baker closed her eyes and wiped her mouth.

"Just more to clean up," she murmured weakly as she turned and peered around the shop to where the laundry sat all over the floor on the other side of the counter. The room spun and she eased herself around the counter and began slowly picking up the laundry that had fallen in her attempts at regaining balance.

"Gotta get the laundry done," she mused weakly as she felt a trickle of something escape her lips and slid down her chin. She went to wipe it with her hand and came back with more blood. She closed her eyes as the world spun around her again- this time she managed to get herself into the booth, her head resting on her arms on the table top. Another coughing fit wracked her body and her fingers curled into the edge of the table, terrified sobs finally wrenching free from her vocals as the baker was forced to face that something was very wrong. Her own fist was thrust against her teeth as she worried of waking the lad that slept on the couch in the parlor, or wrenching the barber upstairs from his musings.

He never did like when she made too much noise.

Her hands were coated with blood when she finally made it to the sink where she did the laundry, the pungent smell of her own throw-up making her gag.

Upstairs, the barber paced in fast hard circles, his foot steps loud in his own ears as he moved to and fro infront of the window. He was seeing red again, a razor clutched delicately in his large hands. When he paused to take a glance at himself in the cracked mirror, a stange, unsettling sound wafted up from below. It was faint and soft and he couldn't quite make out the source of it- but knowing his luck it was Mrs. Lovett doing some sort of thing.

Some sort of silly Mrs. Lovett thing.

The man looked down curiously at the floor boards and stayed as still as possible. The sound cut off sharply, and then there was silence. A sigh of slight annoyance left Mr. Todd's lips, and with full intention of sending the overworked woman off to bed so he could pace in peace, the barber swung open the door to his shop and started down the stairs, his shoes thunking hollowly on the steps.

Around the corner of the shop the demon went, and the sight of the shop didn't alert him of something amiss until his eyes zeroed in on his baker in the dim candle light. "Mrs. Lovett...?"

The woman was a right mess. Her hair was drenched as the sweat prickled at her sink, and yet goose bumps rose from her arms. She was sitting at her stool by the sink, holding one of his shirts in her lap, the hard brush she used for scrubbing away the blood fallen at her feet. As he moved closer, around the side of the counter, he saw that she was usuing the sink as a clutch, her brown eyes staring down in misbelief at something in her lap.

The shirt of his that rested there was splattered with fresh bloods- her lips an unnatural red for her make up.

He forced himself not to be alarmed when the woman looked up at him, the light disappeared from her eyes.

"I feel sick, Mr. Todd," she whispered quietly. He barely had time to catch her before she went tipsy off the stool. Swinging her into his arms, the barber swore as she went into a violent fit of coughing, blood filled the back of her throat.

He moved silently through the parlor as to not wake the boy who slept in a drunken stupor, and nudged open Mrs. Lovett's bedroom door, laying her down on the still unmade bed. His rough hands brushed her hair out of her face and wiped the blood away from the corners of her mouth.

Mr. Todd's hands hovered uselessly as he looked down upon his landlady, who controted in pain, writhing on the bed as if the devil attempted to possess her body. He sat perched on the edge of the matress, watching unsurely.

"Mr. Todd," she managed, gurgling bile and blood out of the side of her lips, which he promptly brushed away for her. "I'm afraid."

"Nothing to fear, my love," he told her quietly, his eyes soft. "Over tired, is all. Need some rest, is all. You'll be up and ready to run the shop again come morning."

"It hurts," she sputtered. "God, Mr. Todd, it hurts. Does dying hurt, do you think, Mr. Todd?"

"You're not dying, silly woman," he said roughly, his teeth clenched. He looked away, at the floor. He didn't like her, Mrs. Lovett, not much. Perhaps, once, long ago, Benjamin Barker adored the Nellie that he found sitting in the parlor with his darling Lucy on Sunday mornings, but no. Sweeney Todd did not like Mrs. Lovett very much.

But that didn't mean seeing her in pain didn't make him uncomfortable.

"God, please," she cried out as a particularly hard cough, forced bile and blood out of her throat. "I don't want to die, Mr. T."

"Don't be silly," he said softly. "In a year or so you're going to be by the sea, with your cozy little abode, and Toby, and all the fortune your pies have brought you."

"And you?" A pained gasp for breath.

Mr. Todd looked down at her. Her eyes were closed and her cheeks were pink. He pressed one hand to her forehead, and the warmth almost burnt him. The fever spiked higher.

"Even I, Mrs. Lovett."

"Good," she gasped out, but the woman doubled up, her knees brought high, her arms around her own stomach. She moaned miserably. "I don't want to die," she sobbed.

Mr. Todd pet her face and her cheeks with his cold hands and she semed to calm a bit. The more he soothed her face and throat with his hands, the quieter she became, until her breaths were just little whisps of air escaping her parted lips. Soon, her chest stopped heaving so hard. Soon, her chest stopped heaving at all. He kept stroking her face and neck with his cold fingers until the warmth from her face faded.

It was pressing dawn, the gray outside her window leaving a chilly patch of light on the floor, before the barber wrestled the blanket out from under the baker's still, breathless body and placed it over her. He didn't like her, his Mrs. Lovett, not much. But she was _his_ Mrs. Lovett, after all. Benjamin Barker, somewhere in some abandoned dusty corner of his heart, thought how nice it would be if Nellie ended up somewhere by the sea, where she always talked of going.

_By the sea, Mr. Barker, that's where I'll end up!_

_By the sea, Mr. Todd, that's the life I covet._


End file.
